Black Oystercatcher
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Black Oystercatcher Haematopus bachmani
Oh yeah! FINALLY!!! A properly exposed, eye-level, reasonably sharp, reasonably close view of a Black Oystercatcher. Only took me two years to learn how. :-)

I'm reading the book Art & Fear. A section from it seems pertinent to me now. To get out of my rut, I have to just keep shooting...

"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."
Focal length: 700 mm fStop: 5.6 ISO: 640 Shutter Speed: 1/500
Pescadero, CA - Pescadero Beach
Dec 15, 2006